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When Emilio Pagan was acquired from the San Diego Padres mere hours before the start of the 2022 season, he was replacing the fan-favorite reliever that he was traded for. Taylor Rogers was a fixture in the back end of the Twins bullpen for parts of six seasons – but Pagan wasn’t able to match that production in his first year with the club. Of course, there were many other layers to the swap (the inclusion of Chris Paddack, questions surrounding Rogers’ injured finger, etc.), but the stark contrast in player popularity soured the deal for many fans.
Nevertheless, the Twins brought Pagan back for another campaign this year, and all hope seemed gone for good after a six-run drubbing in Boston on April 20th. Many believed that should have been his final game as a member of the Twins, and their frustration was relatively justified. That clunker brought his Twins career ERA to 4.82, with 12 home runs allowed, often in crucial points of tight games.
Since that day, Pagan has gone through a renaissance - a Paganaissance, if you will. But how much faith should we be putting in the new Emilio? Are his results finally starting to match his raw talent? Or was Tuesday night’s slip-up against Seattle a sign that he’s still walking a tight rope?
Before coughing up the lead to the Mariners in that brutal loss, Pagan had a stretch of three months where he was one of the most-reliable options in the Twins’ relief corps. From April 26th through July 23rd, he had a sterling 2.29 ERA with a 0.91 WHIP and a strong 25.2% strikeout rate. Opponents hit just .159 off of him in that span, and he gave up just three home runs across 35 1/3 innings pitched. He stranded 80% of runners in those three months, which is pivotal for a pitcher that has been slain by the long ball throughout his career. His Win Probability Added was a plus-0.22, which is uncharted territory for the polarizing reliever.
He started looking more like the pitcher that the front office envisioned with rose-colored glasses, and less like the last resort in a fluid bullpen picture.
But right on queue, just when Pagan’s stock had never been higher, the other shoe dropped as he gave up a game-tying blast to Julio Rodriguez in the eighth inning of Tuesday’s demoralizing loss to the Mariners. While only one of that inning’s four earned runs was charged to Pagan, he carried the heaviest weight of that loss, as he has many times over the last two seasons. After all that progress (and about 80% of this article being completed), that bomb brought on the traumatic echoes of Pagan’s hardest moments as a Twin.
So what should fans expect going forward? It’s not like the Twins have a plethora of lock-down relief options, but then again, the club has been burned multiple times after entrusting Pagan with high-leverage opportunities. The team and their pitcher are stuck in a never-ending cycle of building up a beautiful house of cards with strings of scoreless outings, only to be tumbled down with a gust of wind from an opponent’s home run in the least opportune moments imaginable. At the end of the day, those three months were fantastic and much-needed for the team and player alike. But still, it's hard to trust somebody who has a career-long reputation for dropping the ball at the worst moments.
It’s reasonable to expect two more months of solid production from Pagan, with a few slips mixed in along the way. For a Twins bullpen that seems to constantly be in flux, that’s going to be a tough pill to swallow when the other shoe drops. But until they get some reinforcements - either via trade or an unexpected internal candidate steps up - Pagan is going to get plenty of action in medium to high-leverage situations. Is the team going to get the same old Emilio that fumbles the bag like he did against the Mariners, or will they get the rock-solid set-up option that flourished in the Paganaissance?
What do you think? Does Pagan’s excellent three-month stretch change his reputation in your eyes, or did Tuesday prove he's still the same old Emilio? What are your expectations for him over the next two months? Let us know in the comment section below.
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